Good or not-so-good?

28.09.2014

Kevin with team-mates concluded his first Blancpain Endurance Series season with P5 at Nürburgring. And yes, it rained there.

Being fifth in Nürburgring 1000 kilometers race is not a bad result but when so many things hinder your potential then you will certainly ask what could have been possible. Even more so if you are a leader after the first stint. This is how it all panned out.

Talking about the
expectations for Nürburgring 1000 km race you said you hope for a good Balance
of Performance (Bop) and dry weather. You definitely didn't get the latter but
the former seemed to be excellent?

Yeah, I guess in dry we could have been fighting for the
victory. Actually, after qualification the BoP was altered a little bit in our
favor because Audis were too fast there. Then, our qualification was not
excellent for several reasons. Andy went out first and was not as fast as we
expected, although he was eventually the one who qualified us in P5. I drove in
Q2 and got the rain during my single hot lap. Our garages were on the distant
end of the pit-lane which meant we came out last and those in the other end
managed to get two dry laps. It was clearly visible from the data how I lost
time due to the rain. Q3 was wet thereafter and then we lost 2.8 seconds to
Audis, they were two seconds faster than anybody. Gap to Audis was a big
concern.

But then Kévin E who
started the car took the lead in the rain.

Yeah, when the race started we raised to P1 and we had no
explanation about what is going on because one day before we lost 2.8 seconds
per lap. During the later part of the race it turned out that if it rains
heavily, our car is fast. Race was started behind the SC because of the heavy
rain, Kévin E went to the lead in three laps (in picture above) and pulled the gap to P2 to four
seconds but had to defend his position for his final few laps. If the tarmac
starts to dry out, Audi's pace improves, but we are going to lose time when
rain gets lighter.

Kévin E completed his
first stint in P1, then you took over the car and tires were also changed
while leading car continued on worn set. You lost a huge time
with that and seemingly didn't get it back?

Yes, we were left behind by 28 seconds or something and the
gap even started to widen because the drying track complicated the case for us.
During my first stint track became drier and drier and I lost relatively large
amount of time. Second stint was rather OK, other cars around us had new tires
while I had old ones and I only lost six seconds during the whole hour. I don't
think there would have been a big difference if I had changed the tires after
my first stint and not before it. Perhaps I had been even slower during my
first stint and faster during the second one.

Everything was still
possible then, though.

Yeah, Andy took the car in P5 and then SC went out which
wiped away all the advantage leaders had. In two laps Andy went to P3 and we
were only eight seconds behind P1. We had new tires, it was raining stronger
again and everything was fine. But then he had an off and two collisions – once
with a Bentley which was a lap down and then with a Merc he had a direct fight.
Tire had a slow puncture but he carried on because heavy rain kept the loss in
reasonable limits. Then the tire suddenly blew, he had to make an extra stop
and when track dried out again, he was losing four second per lap on worn
tires. But if you drive for a full hour losing four seconds in every lap you
are going to be lap down and that is what happened to us.

Then you took a huge
risk...

Yes, because we had no pace on the damp track we decided to
risk and changed to slicks as the first car when Kévin E took over: maybe we
can win some time back and achieve P3 or something. Otherwise we had no chance
to improve. Then Kévin E went out on the slicks, spun in the space of four
turns and got stuck on the wet grass. He couldn't help it, wheels were just
spinning around and car was creeping little-by-little but he couldn't get back
to the track. Eventually we was pushed back onto the tarmac by marshals but
more than two minutes were lost.

Without that incident
did you still had a chance for a win?

Is this hadn't happen we still could have had a chance to
take P3 or even maybe P2. Victory was out of our reach. Anyway, we had taken a
big risk so you can't blame Kévin. It's a shame Andy had that puncture and
weather was not optimal as well. If the asphalt had dried out at one go, maybe
it had been better for us, but now we had those unpleasant intermediate
conditions twice.

It seemed different
cars were fast in different conditions.

Yes, it was very strange this time. Mercs were also fast in
the wet but I guess we could have beaten them and in the dry we could have
fought with Audi as well. But when you have this changing weather Audi tends to
be fast in whatever weather. Maybe always not the fastest but at least among
the fastest while everybody else was slow at some moment – that's their
strength. We lost them three second per lap in intermediate conditions.

You made your first
double-stint at Nürburgring, was it tough physically?

At one moment during my second stint rain became so hard we
aquaplaned absolutely everywhere. If you catch a slower car in those condition
the visibility is maybe only three meters and even lapped cars don't let you
through because they don't know if it is a car which is lapping them or is it
trying to steal their place. Battling was going on all the time, it never got
boring. But physically it was OK, it is harder in the dry. When it rains it is
not becoming so hot inside and speeds in turns are also lower on the wet track.

Do you have air
conditioning in the car?

Yes we have but it helps not so much. If it is a warm
weather then it blows cold air for 15-20 minutes and then it starts to blow
warm air. And for the case of rain we have heated window against misting.

All in all it was an
eventful race.

It definitely was. We can't say it was a bad race for us. P5
in Nürburgring 1000 km race is not a bad result by any standards. On the other
hand we can't be satisfied, as many things happened during the race. But then
you can look at what happened to our sister car – they managed to avoid one
crash, then the other and then third car crashed into them while they were
absolutely helpless.

Now you have only one
race left in your season – ELMS final round at Estoril. What do you expect from
there?

Let's see what we can do there, all those things we have had
to fight in ELMS remain the same. We must take a maximum from those conditions
and hopefully I can fight for a pole-position in qualifying. I have had two
successive second places, it would be nice to win at last. We use different
tires in different series. In Blancpain we are on Pirellis and only twice I have
run on fresh rubber. In ELMS we run on Michelins and I have had a dozen or so new
sets so I know how they behave to squeeze all the performance out of them.